Chesapeake Bay Deadrise Boats

The deadrise and cross-planked bottom style of boatbuilding started on Chesapeake Bay in the 1880s, when builders of wooden boats began to shift away from constructing vessels out of logs and into using planks to create hulls with a V-shaped bottom. Marine historian Howard I. Chapelle says that the style started in the North and Deep South (on the Gulf of Mexico)—but was not popular in those areas—before coming to Chesapeake Bay. The Chesapeake Bay’s choppy, shoal water conditions were idea...